


To Somehow

by atlasian



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15x18, Canon Compliant, Coda, Episode AU: s15e18 Despair, Episode Tag, Episode: s15e18 Despair, Fix-It, Fluff, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Season/Series 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:55:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27452350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlasian/pseuds/atlasian
Summary: Dean chances a guess that this is the third most literal worst timing.One would be if Chuck was dancing in the background, snapping everyone away Thanos-style to the tune of Highway to Hell.Second would be Sam catching them in the act. Cliché, trope, wonderment of atrocity at its finest.But third? Yes, third. Third would be here, right now, with Death ‘Here’s Johnny’ through the door, the Empty coming for his best friend who has tears streaming down his stubbled cheek as if this is the Big Goodbye.This is not goodbye.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 20
Kudos: 104





	1. Fixed it.

**Author's Note:**

> It’s quick, it’s rushed, but it was needed.
> 
> Let’s all support each other during these difficult times and churn out as many fix-it fics as we can ❤️

Dean chances a guess that this is the third most literal worst timing.

One would be if Chuck was dancing in the background, snapping everyone away Thanos-style to the tune of Highway to Hell.

Second would be Sam catching them in the act. Cliché, trope, wonderment of atrocity at its finest.

But third? Yes, third. Third would be here, right now, with Death ‘Here’s Johnny’ through the door, the Empty coming for his best friend who has tears streaming down his stubbled cheek as if this is the Big Goodbye.

This is not goodbye.

It’s with a fuck-you kind of timing that with blood on his coat, mud on their shoes, gore and guts covering everything, that Dean thrusts his fists and clasps onto Cas’ trench lapels and firmly says, “No.”

The Empty screeches behind.

Dean’s hand drifts, cradles Cas by his jaw, pulls him forward for their lips to brush.

Not quite a kiss. Not yet.

Behind them, a blood-curdling scream.

The sound of something smashing or combusting. A cry of agonizing pain. Billie’s. 

Cas’ teeth scrape his bottom lip. Dean thinks he draws a little blood on his own mouth by pressing back harder. There’s still crashing and screaming and a cosmic entity eating another in the background and it’s pretty much exactly how Dean pictured his first kiss with Castiel, disgraced Angel of Thursday.

A dark liquid fire touches him, reaches over and consumes half of Cas’ shoulder.

Their kiss ends there with Dean gasping, “no,” and Cas smiling at him, bittersweet.

The Empty spirals around Cas’ body in record time, erasing that smile.

Dean thinks, “not today, bitch,” and that’s that. Dean isn’t going to let this happen.

‘To Somehow.’

He lurches himself forward into a formless Cas, into the goo, begins to babble nonsensically, without plan.

“Cas, you can’t be happy, not sacrificing yourself for me like this. Y’know the first thing I’m going to do after that bitch ganks you for good? I’m going to sit down in that corner over there and I’m going to ignore the world. Hell, I might even lose myself again. That can’t make you happy, man. Not like this. If you love me, you can’t hurt me like this.” He knows it’s not Cas’ fault but what he’s saying, it makes something twitch.

The Empty retreats, but only hesitantly.

“And you, you dull, indolent, plodding pile of goop, you want peace and quiet, I know that. I swear to you I will make your existence louder than the goddamn Big Bang once you take him. I’m trying to kill God right now. I think I‘m stupid and angry and stubborn enough to find a way to burst your eardrums,” Dean’s arrogant smirk wobbles through his tears, “He brought you to Billie. You have your vengeance. Kinda. Just—enough now. Please.”

“We made a deal,” the dark sludge hisses and it sounds like it’s reverberating from every wall in the room.

“I know, I get that.” Dean, palms up in retreat, nods and squints at it with false understanding, “but I’ll make you a better one. You let him go and I’ll make sure you get your sleep. Your deal with Billie, that’s—what? Kaput now, isn’t it? But me, I can make that happen. I’m gonna get Chuck, I’m gonna get Amara, I’ll find a way to get you back to sleep and if I can’t—“ Dean swallows thickly—“well, you’ll be awake to come back for both of us.”

A muffled cry of protest emerges from where he assumes Cas is, and then he knows it’s where Cas is because first he sees his chin, and then his cheeks, and then his eyes.

It’s ebbing away.

Dean breathes a sigh of relief, or maybe he just breathes for the first time since he started on his nowhere plan.

“If I am still awake when you finish, Dean Winchester, I will be back,” comes the ominous whistle of air.

It vanishes quicker than it arrived.

Cas collapses onto the floor, heaving big breaths and glaring half-heartedly at Dean who is laughing with joy through his tears.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” Dean laugh-cries, rushing to his side and patting Cas down like a mother hen.

They’re clutching and sobbing together on the floor when Cas seems to come to his senses and splutters. “Me? Me? You—!”

Dean kisses him again with less force, less pressure, less desperation and Cas sinks into it with a trembling release of breath.

They move together gently for a few seconds before Cas pulls away and smacks Dean on his arm, the same place he left his bloody handprint.

“What the hell were you thinking? How could you be so stupid, so reckless—“

“C’mon, Cas. Five minutes ago you were telling me how great I was and professing your big gay love for me with tears in your eyes. You can’t really be that fickle.”

“Don’t make light of this,” he warns in his commandeering tone that was very much angelic and forceful. For a second, Dean feels an emotional whiplash and his insides waver with uncertainty.

“That’s—that was what it was...right? You didn’t mean—I mean it didn’t sound like—were you just saying goodbye and it wasn’t...that kind of love? More like a profound bond brotherly kind of...thing?” He stammers, sweat beading faster than when Death was literally at their doorstep.

Cas looks flabbergasted. He opens his mouth, tilts his head, then shakes it. “I meant every word I said, Dean,” he murmurs softly, and he sounds like Cas again, the open-hearted, puppy-eyed, earnest man he had grown to be. “You are the bravest, exquisite, most stubbornly good man in the entire cosmos, but fuck, for such a clever person you can be so stupid at times.”

Dean balks. “Did you just swear?”

“I’ve just kissed you twice—“

“Technically, I kissed you—“

“I have never spoken about anyone or anything the way I spoke about you, to you, and after all that, you doubt the nature of my affections for you.”

Dean licks his lips nervously, trying and failing not to grin too obnoxiously.

“Also, it’s not gay, I’m an angel. I have no gender.”

Dean guffaws, earning another fondly disapproving look from Cas. “Buddy, you look very much like a hot guy to me so I’m pretty sure it’s a bit gay.”

Cas huffs but then graces Dean with a small, shy smile once he’s spent twenty seconds pretending to be mildly annoyed. It rushes him with such a surge of affection that he can’t help but reach forwards to brush Cas’ dirty cheek with his own dirty thumb.

“I thought...” Cas begins, his expression transforming again into something slightly forlorn, “I thought you’d have a problem with my vessel. I’d always thought maybe, just maybe, if I had ended up occupying a female body, that you would—“

The thumb that lingers on his face moves to his lips to quiet him, and then he replaces it by touching their mouths together again.

“Stop making me kiss you to shut you up for saying stupid things,” Dean says, rolling his eyes. “I’m in my forties and you’re making us both look like dumbass teenagers here.”

“I prefer less dumb. Less ass.”

Dean grins. “This feels like a dream, y’know. A really great one. One I’ve had a few times before, a little less crying, a little less clothes.”

“Dean.”

“Cas.”

A phone vibrates in the distance and they both exclaim, “shit!” at the same time. Dean doesn’t even have time to tease Cas for his expletive because he’s scrambling to grab his phone. Sam’s name is emblazoned in letters that seems like a rebuke to their ignorance of the world and it’s impending doom.

Dean answers, shuts his eyes as he listens.

Cas is crouched in the corner, his head in his hands.


	2. Trauma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean still hasn’t confessed back. Today he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s been a couple of days and 15x18 is still traumatising to me. So that’s the theme for today’s fix-it.
> 
> Thank you for anyone that takes the time to read and comment. I appreciate all feedback or even just any general support group complaining we got going on 😂

They find Sam sat on a park bench, watching into nothing with deadened eyes.

Jack is inching back and forth on the swings, listless.

The park is as quiet and empty as the road had been on their drive over.

When Dean and Cas approach, Sam glances briefly at their interlaced hands.

He squints so infinitesimally that if Dean had blinked, he would have missed that micro-expression of unbridled confusion.

He parts his mouth as if to ask, then smiles darkly as if the ‘does-not-compute’ element of his brain has been overridden by ‘whatever’.

“You alright there, Sammy?” Dean asks tentatively, squeezing Cas’ hand once before letting it go. He moves to sit by his brother.

Sam’s chest puffs, his head drops forward, and he shakes as if he’s laughing. No sound comes out.

Dean nods at Cas, jerking his chin at Jack. Cas returns his nod. In their silent communication, Dean has urged him to attend to the hollow-eyed kid while he wraps one arm around Sam’s shoulder.

“Sammy?”

“Everyone’s gone, Dean,” he mutters. “Eileen, Bobby, Charlie, Donna...the whole world.”

The information doesn’t move through Dean initially. He sits there, frowns, and then feels his lungs give out when the empty human-less landscape punctures him. His mind does a rerun of everyone they’ve lost and everything goes to black as tears prick his eyes.

He realises he’s convulsing ever so slightly in panic, lips moving uselessly, when his brother touches his chest.

“Dean, are you okay? You look like—I don’t know—there’s a bloody handprint on your jacket, by the way. That doesn’t seem good either...”

Dean gasps in half a breath of unhinged laughter. “I think I’m fine, but I’m only, like, sixty-two percent sure. A lot—a lot’s happened. I’m not even sure this isn’t all a fever dream.”

“Dean—“

“Billie’s dead. Guess we have a lot to catch up on, a lot to mourn,” Dean snorts, bleary-eyed. He’s thinks he’s blurred by tears that haven’t spilled. “The Empty is gone for now. If we can’t beat Chuck—“

“We will,” comes Jack’s firm intonation.

Both brothers snap up to attention to find Jack standing by Cas’ side, looking more together than the rest of them combined.

“We’ll find another way. Somehow,” he intones.

Cas gives Dean a private teary smile. Dean responds with his own, Jack doesn’t notice, and Sam pretends not to.

The drive back home is as silent and dark as the Empty.

When they step out the car, Dean’s fingers drift towards Cas’ and they clutch at each other once more as they make their way down the steps of the bunker.

After Dean settles Cas down onto a chair and hands him a cup of cocoa, then another to Jack, Sam startles him at his side by the bar where Dean is pouring whiskey into a tumbler for himself.

“You and Cas seem very clingy with each other all of a sudden.”

Dean almost spills the amber liquid onto the table as his hand spasms and he jumps.

“Jesus, Sam. Don’t creep up on a guy like that. What, now I gotta teach you too about this?”

“What else have you been teaching Cas lately? Holding hands through the apocalypse together?”

“Why are you being so snarky right now?” Dean snaps. Sam’s attack mode melts into a softened expression and he looks so much like a kicked puppy that Dean collapses in on himself in shame.

“Hey, look, I’m sorry, man. Okay? We good?” he asks awkwardly.

“Nothing’s good right now, Dean.” Sam chances a deep look into Dean’s defensive stance. “Except for you and Cas and your secret little looks and the thing with the hands.”

“What are you trying to say, Sam? Spit it out.”

He runs a hand through his hair that badly needs a cut, rubs a hand over his mouth, and looks away. Classic nervous Sam gesture.

“Come on, say it. Everyone’s dead and gone, there’s a pretty big chance we’ll be too, so what—“

“Why now?” Sam asks quietly, but it’s so piercing that it interrupts Dean like a sharp needle has been run through his skin.

“Why now?” he echoes to Sam.

“When everything’s ending, when most of everyone we love is dead, when humanity has never been on such a close brink of collapsing...” he pauses, looking pained, “when it has collapsed.” He levels Dean with a genuinely baffled look. “You’ve been pining for eleven years. It looked that way. I wasn’t always sure. I never thought about it much because I never thought anything would ever come of it. The man’s an angel and you’re...you like girls.”

“I like Cas a hell of a lot more,” Dean blurts without thinking. It seems to catch them both of guard, but Dean a little more.

Sam collects himself first. “Why now, Dean?” he asks flatly.

Dean feels that fire, the one that’s been simmering in him since the Empty dared tried to take one of the few good things in his life, since he almost lost Cas, since he’s lost everyone else, maybe even Jack and his little brother soon. That fire, it erupts.

“Because if not now then when, Sam? In case you haven’t noticed, we might not have much time left, alright?” he shouts. “Did you know that I almost lost him today? Again? And here’s the kicker, the son’uva bitch told me he loved me. Me. The things he said...I...never has there been anyone loves me like he does, alright? I don’t think I’ve felt good about myself, talk openly like this, and be honest to you in a really long time. Cas helps me with that. He...he’s special to me, alright?” He’s heaving when he’s done, defensive and there’s that anger again. Directed at who, at what, he doesn’t even know anymore.

Sam’s encouraging smile gentles it. Soon, he’s breathing the fire out and he smiles back.

“So...what, you have a boyfriend now?” There’s a teasing smirk that replaces his genuine smile.

Dean scowls at him but only half-heartedly. “Shut your face.”

“Oh,” Sam drawls, still enjoying this way too much. “You haven’t talked about it yet.”

“Sam, I swear, you need to go to your room right now and we’ll regroup later. You need to sleep.”

Sam scoffs. “Yeah, alright. Sleep. Everyone’s dead, the world’s ending, and my brother’s banging an angel man that’s been our best friend for eleven years. Sure. Okay.”

“We’re not—!” He lowers his voice and hisses, “we’re not banging!”

“Sure. Okay.”

“Don’t just say sure okay.”

“Sure. Okay.”

Sam’s halfway down the hallway when he shouts back, way too loudly, “does this mean you’re gay?”

“Bye, Sam!”

“Oh, right, bi. That was insensitive of me, sorry. Okay, goodnight.”

Dean curses beneath his breath then curses again when Cas pops up behind him.

“Doesn’t anybody here know not to creep up on a guy with a gun? Especially after all this shit today!” Dean yells.

“Hello to you to, Dean,” Cas says with some sarcastic undertone.

Dean rolls his eyes then opens his arms wide with flappy hands.

“What are you doing?” Cas mocks more than asks, looking both perplexed and discomfited by the gesture.

“Come in for a hug, dumbass. I’m asking for a hug.”

“Oh.”

Cas embraces him immediately and Dean envelops him with such tightness that implies he never wants to let go.

“Um...Cas?”

They’re still hugging so it’s a little awkward when Cas replies, mumbling against his shoulder, “yes?”

“I really...I really love you,” Dean confesses as tenderly as he can, his heart racing. “I love you too, I mean.”

Cas yanks back like Dean had just told him he was about to gank him, not that he was in love with the weirdo.

“You do?” he gapes, and it’s kind of both hilarious and adorable. “You actually...you do?”

“Yeah, stupid,” Dean kicks at the scuff on his shoe like he’s thirteen and not scraping mid-forties.

“You’re going to have to look at me when you say it then.”

Dean bolts upright and when he manages to look at Cas without his heart racing like it’s at its end days, Cas is beaming at him.

“Go on, then.”

“You’ve gotten very cutesy and sassy, y’know that? Very human.”

“I’m still waiting.”

“Fine, fine,” Dean waves a hand dismissively but places it on Cas’ neck afterwards. He rubs circles there, thrilled he’s able to just do this now. “I love you.”

They’re making out like horny virgins against a wall when they hear a soft and surprised little, “oh.”

Cas pulls away first, rests his forehead against Dean as Dean mutters, “for fuck’s sake.”

With immense willpower he untangles himself from Cas, swears again when he notices the unmissable bulge in both their trousers, and ungainly manoeuvres himself onto a nearby chair. 

Cas mimics him. Dean crosses his legs. Cas does too.

“Heya Jack,” Dean greets too loudly with an overconfidence he really doesn’t feel and plasters on his widest grin. “How you—what’s—what’s hangin’, lil dude?”

He feels Cas’ eyes on him. He can feel the judgement permeating through in waves.

“What’s hangin’, lil dude?” he hisses at Dean.

“You say something else then,” Dean hisses back.

“I can hear you both,” Jack announces with an earnest air of reassurance, “I’m a nephilim.”

Dean and Cas stare back at him blankly. He offers them a smile and lifts the mug he’s holding in one hand. “Can I have more hot cocoa, please?”

“Of course you can, kid!”

“Anything you want, Jack.”

“Do you want me to make you a pot? We have a teapot somewhere, but I’m sure we can make it into a cocoapot, heh.”

“There’s some cookies in the pantry too, Jack.”

“Do you want a sandwich? Are you hungry, buddy?”

“Sam’s cereal is also in the pantry.”

Dean and Cas’ wild scramble of word babble overlap one another’s and only comes to a halt when Jack’s head stops swivelling between them both.

“I think I just want the cocoa. If that’s okay,” he says with a smile.

“Of course.”

“Whatever you want.”

He hands the mug to Dean and Dean gets half-way up the chair before he realises his...problem hasn’t gone down. He falls back into the seat, stares at the mug, and gulps.

“Er...” he looks to Cas. Cas glances down at himself then shakes his head. Dean stares again at the mug.

“Oh!” Jack exclaims. “Of course. Sorry. I’ll wait in the living room. You can bring the hot cocoa to me after your sex.” He smiles gratefully once more at them before exiting the room.

Dean and Cas stare at the mug for a moment longer, then look at each other with mute horror.

“I think that traumatised me more than it did Jack,” Dean whispers.

“He’s a nephilim, Dean. He can still hear you even when you whisper.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really couldn’t decide which type of trauma to stick with, so I guess that’s this chapter


End file.
